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Does Donald Trump Really Love Your Skyrocketing Grocery Bill?

New numbers landed Wednesday and they’re ugly. The Consumer Price Index shows inflation hit four point two percent over the past year. That’s the highest in three years. Beef and veal are up almost thirteen percent. Tomatoes jumped thirty-two percent. Coffee, lettuce, and gas all climbing. Strip out food and energy and the core number sits near three percent, so this spike is being driven straight by the oil shock. So a reporter asked the president if he’s worried. His answer? “I love the inflation.” He said the numbers were great. He claimed prices will drop like a rock once his war with Iran is over. Tell that to the family staring at an empty fridge. Sixty-three percent of Americans already say he’s wrecking the economy. Inflation had been cooling before his tariffs hit last year, and the Iran war sent oil and gas soaring all over again. Even his own Republicans are sweating, terrified that angry voters will sink them in November. One Democratic governor put it plainly, saying your struggle is a joke to him. He promised to knock the hell out of inflation. Instead he’s cheering it on while working people pay the price. When the man in charge loves your pain, you know exactly whose side he’s really on.

Has Trump Turned America Into a Country Europe No Longer Trusts?

A brand new survey just delivered a gut punch to America’s standing in the world. Across fifteen European countries, only eleven percent now see the United States as an ally. Eleven percent. Two years ago it was twenty-two. Now it’s collapsed. The European Council on Foreign Relations released the findings just ahead of the G7 and NATO summits. Majorities in every single country doubt America would even defend them if they were attacked. So Europe is moving on. They’re voting to borrow money together to fund their own defense. They want to buy European weapons instead of ours, and Italy aside, country after country is backing bigger defense budgets of their own. And here’s the kicker. In nearly every country, people believe relations will only improve once Trump leaves office. That’s a verdict. Decades of alliances, the kind that kept the peace and powered our economy, getting torched in real time. When your closest friends start planning their lives around your absence, that’s not strength. That’s a flashing red warning.

Elon Musk Is Fanning the Flames as Belfast Burns

Belfast burned Tuesday night. After a Sudanese man was charged in a knife attack, racist mobs turned their rage on the entire immigrant community. Families fled their homes. Cars and buildings went up in flames. Masked men torched a city bus. And cheering it all on from his perch atop the world’s richest fortune was Elon Musk. On his platform X, Musk amplified the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson, promoting times and places for protests across the country. “Only by protesting repeatedly and loudly will there be any change,” Musk wrote. Britain’s Labour Party called his behavior appalling. Musk also boosted a post claiming the British government has no legitimacy because it won’t defend its borders. This is the same Musk who’s propped up neo-Nazi-linked parties in Germany, cozied up to Britain’s Nigel Farage, and bankrolled Trump here at home. A billionaire with a megaphone the size of a planet, using it to set neighborhoods on fire. That’s not free speech. That’s arson with a keyboard.

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Who is the real “Pig” Dragging America Through the Mud?

From the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president of the United States went on a tear. His target was Graham Platner, the Democrat who just won Maine’s Senate nomination. Trump’s verdict? “He is just an outright pig.” Then he sneered that pigs would be upset by the comparison. Now hold on. Platner has owned his past mistakes, apologized, and worked to earn back people’s trust. And Trump? A civil jury found him liable for sexually abusing a woman. He’s a convicted felon. And his name keeps surfacing in the Epstein files he once promised to release. So when this president calls somebody a pig, it bounces right back. This is the bully pulpit reduced to a schoolyard. No policy. No vision. Just insults flung from the most powerful office on Earth. Voters can weigh Platner’s record. But you really have to ask who’s the actual pig dragging this country into the mud.

What’s So Scary About Social Security That a Congressman Fakes a Phone Call?

This one you have to see to believe. A reporter caught up with Virginia Republican Rob Wittman and asked a simple question about Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to cut Social Security. Wittman’s response? He whipped out his phone and pretended to take a call. “Yeah, I’ll be there in just a few minutes,” he said into a phone that wasn’t even connected. His screen was visible the whole time. His own cheek kept tapping the display. He kept the act going for ninety seconds and then walked away. And it wasn’t even his first time. He pulled the same stunt on another reporter just last week. His Democratic challenger, Shannon Taylor, pounced, saying Virginians deserve someone who tells the truth and protects the benefits they earned. So why the panic? Because Johnson admitted on the radio that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid all need to be, in his words, adjusted and fixed. That’s the quiet part out loud. They want to gut the benefits you paid for, and they’re too cowardly to say it to your face.

Is America Deliberately Starving the People of Cuba?

We close this afternoon with something the powerful would rather you never heard. The scholar Danny Shaw just returned from Cuba, and what he describes is harrowing. Families enduring blackouts up to twenty hours a day. Empty shelves. No clean water. No fuel. Gasoline so costly it can swallow three months of wages. Shaw says, “I witnessed an incredible amount of hunger and despair.” This isn’t an accident. After toppling Venezuela’s government, the Trump administration choked off fuel shipments to the island, indicted former president Raul Castro, and is now rattling sabers about invasion. For sixty-seven years Washington has squeezed this island. Cuba’s own foreign minister calls it economic genocide. A whole population pushed to the brink so Washington can force what Trump openly calls a friendly takeover. Schools shuttered. Hospitals running dark. Young people fleeing because there’s nothing left to stay for. Whatever you think of Cuba’s government, starving millions of ordinary people is a crime. And it’s being done in our name, with our tax dollars, while most Americans have no idea it’s even happening.

And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, June 10, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.

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Is The President’s Brain Shutting Down?

On Monday night Donald Trump went home to New York for Game Three of the NBA Finals, and the whole country watched him nod off in his seat. At Madison Square Garden. Surrounded by roaring fans. A speech pathologist named Hilary Shae says that’s not a man who’s tired. That’s a man whose brain can’t keep him awake even in the loudest room in America. She calls it sundowning, a hallmark of dementia. Trump’s own father died with it. The crowd booed him off the jumbotron the moment his face hit the screen, and the Knicks lost for the first time in thirteen straight games. Folks, this man holds the nuclear codes. And he couldn’t stay awake at a basketball game.

Did Trump Just Pocket Billions While His Own Fans Got Wiped Out?

Here’s a gut punch. A new Reuters analysis says the Trump family hauled in around two and a half billion dollars from their crypto ventures since the middle of twenty twenty-four. And the small investors who trusted them lost just about the same amount. One company tied to the family, once called Alt5 Sigma, saw its stock crater ninety-three percent. A software engineer in Minnesota lost sixty thousand dollars. A machinist in Indiana lost about thirty-two thousand. The Trumps walked away with five hundred million from that one deal. That company now faces being kicked off the Nasdaq entirely. One watchdog group told the SEC that “investor funds” got steered to Trump’s own pockets, and demanded an investigation. They sold working folks a dream and quietly kept the cash for themselves.

Who Buys A Tariff Cut With A Secret Trump Junior Payday?

ProPublica just blew the lid off something stunning. Trump slapped fifty percent tariffs on India to punish a billionaire named Mukesh Ambani for buying Russian oil. Then Ambani’s company quietly poured at least one hundred million dollars into a shaky Texas startup, and guess who secretly owns a piece of it. Donald Trump Junior. Months later the tariffs came down, and Ambani got a license to buy Venezuelan oil. Don Junior’s net worth jumped from fifty million to three hundred million in a single year. This is how it works now. You want a policy out of Washington, you put money in the family business. And get this. Ambani’s company already paid the Trump Organization ten million dollars for a project that still doesn’t exist. The refinery they’re hyping may never even get built. This isn’t trade policy. It’s a shakedown in a suit.

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Vance Wants A Blue State Governor Behind Bars

Vice President JD Vance, the man Trump made his fraud czar, just referred Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. Vance says they ignored fraud in social programs. He posted that they “must face justice.” So where’s this coming from? A report from James Comer’s Republican House committee. Ellison fired back and called it a political stunt. Walz called the numbers sensationalized. Think about it. The Vice President left the White House, went on Fox News, and announced a criminal referral against two Democrats live on the air. And remember, Walz already dropped his run for a third term back in January under this exact pressure. They’re not chasing crooks here. They’re hunting down the opposition.

Should Fake AI Smear Ads Be Legal?

And finally, a dark money group called Citizens for Sanity, tied to Stephen Miller, just dropped six figures in Texas on an ad that isn’t even real. It’s entirely fake. An AI-generated video of Senate candidate James Talarico in a dress, singing a cruel song about transgender kids. He never sang it. He never wore it. And the ad never tells you it’s fake. Journalist Taylor Lorenz said we need to make undisclosed AI political ads illegal yesterday. Even some folks on the right are disgusted by it. This is the future they’re building. Put words in your opponent’s mouth, beam it into millions of homes, and let the machines do the lying for them.

And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, June 10, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.

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Is Trump Amping Up the Middle East War?

President Trump says Iran shot down one of our Apache helicopters over the Strait of Hormuz. Two pilots survived. A Navy sea drone pulled them out of the water in a first of its kind rescue. Then Trump went on Truth Social and declared the United States “must, of necessity, respond to this attack.” That threat puts the shaky April truce on the brink. The military says it disabled an Iranian oil tanker in the Gulf just a day earlier, and Israel’s been pounding southern Lebanon while Iran fires back. And here’s the part nobody wants to say out loud. Just hours earlier, Trump promised a peace deal was two or three days away and the Strait would open right up. CNN counted at least thirty eight times he’s claimed a deal was close since March. Thirty eight. One analyst said Trump’s either delusional or just trying to prop up the stock market. Either way, working people don’t get rich off another war. The defense contractors do.

Why Is Trump Calling California’s Election Rigged?

Trump’s at it again, inventing fraud out of thin air. After Los Angeles counted its mayoral primary, progressive Nithya Raman edged out Republican Spencer Pratt for a spot in the runoff against Mayor Karen Bass. So Trump and Vice President Vance started screaming the vote was stolen. His own US Attorney held a press conference and produced exactly zero evidence. None. The Brookings Institution found mail ballot fraud happens about four times in every ten million votes. Experts warn this is the same playbook from twenty twenty, and this time Trump’s loyalists already sit in the key offices, ready to amplify the lie. House Speaker Mike Johnson wouldn’t quite call it rigged, but he said it “stinks to high heaven.” Bass pulled about thirty four percent and is headed to a November runoff, fair and square. But experts say this is just a preview. As the midterms get closer, expect the fraud lie to get louder and the loyalists to get busier. That’s the game now. When the count doesn’t go their way, they don’t accept it. They torch it and dare you to object.

Why Did America Slam Its Door On A World Cup Referee?

Omar Artan flew into Miami to officiate the World Cup. He’d have been the first Somali referee ever to work the tournament, and Africa’s soccer confederation named him referee of the year in twenty twenty five. Instead, border agents pulled him aside and turned him around, calling him a vetting concern. Somalia sits on Trump’s travel ban list of thirty nine countries. Artan put it plainly. “I’m just a referee trying to live his dream.” The Somali government called the treatment shameful and expressed deep regret. Iran’s national team has been forced to stay in Mexico over visa trouble. So here we are, hosting the world’s biggest sporting event while telling a referee his passport makes him a threat. That’s not security. That’s bigotry wearing a badge.

Did Trump’s Tax Bill Just Gut Your Social Security?

The new trustees report landed Tuesday, and it’s grim. The retirement trust fund runs dry in late twenty thirty two, three months sooner than they said just last year. After that, the checks get slashed to seventy eight cents on the dollar. For a typical retiree, that’s roughly five hundred dollars gone every single month. And the program’s own chief actuary says Trump’s tax law helped speed up the day of reckoning. Nancy Altman of Social Security Works didn’t mince words. She said his “hostility to immigrants” and his giant tax bill are draining the very revenue stream that funds your benefits. This is the first trustees report that factors in Trump’s second term. Combine the retirement fund with the disability fund and you buy a couple of extra years, to twenty thirty four, but the gap doesn’t close on its own. Now hear this clearly. Social Security is not going bankrupt. Congress can fix this with the stroke of a pen. The only question is whether they protect your retirement or their donors.

Meet The Trench Coat Commander Who Wants To Be President

Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol boss who ran Trump’s brutal crackdowns in Minneapolis and Chicago, just launched an exploratory committee for the White House. Yes, really. His website is Bovino twenty twenty eight dot com, the slogan is men fight back, and he calls himself The Commander. His campaign photos show him in a long black coat that German media compared to a Nazi uniform. Bovino says his “one and only priority is deporting the one hundred six million illegals here.” That number is pure fantasy. There aren’t remotely that many undocumented people in the entire country. And remember, two American citizens died at the hands of his agents in Minneapolis this January. He thinks that record qualifies him to run the country. When the cruelty is the resume, God help us all.

Geeky Science. Did The Booze Lobby Just Bury Your Health Warning?

Here’s one for the science desk. Back under Biden, the government commissioned a study on alcohol and your health. The findings were clear. Your risk climbs with just one drink a day, and no amount of alcohol actually protects you. Even drinking they call moderate raises your odds of an early death and more than two hundred diseases, including cancer and heart disease. So what did the Trump administration do? It left those findings out of the new dietary guidelines after the alcohol industry and a congressional committee pushed back hard. The study came out on its own this week anyway. Researcher Doctor Timothy Naimi summed it up. “Less is best.” The science was rock solid. The lobbyists just didn’t like the answer. And when the booze industry gets to write your health advice, you’re the one who picks up the tab.

And that’s the way it is, Today Tuesday, June ninth, two thousand twenty six. I’m Thom Hartmann.

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Did Trump Send American Paratroopers to go Into Iran in Secret?

The Pentagon quietly flew paratroopers from the Army’s storied Geronimo battalion into Israel, and they hid it from you. Journalist Ken Klippenstein reports the deployment order went out April seventh, part of a contingency plan with Israel for seizing Iranian territory that’s been on the books since February. The Pentagon told the press the troops were headed to CENTCOM. They never said Israel. Why the secrecy? Because launching from Israel means no Gulf state gets a say, and no public debate gets in the way. The report says the quiet kept Americans from arguing over a joint operation inside Iran. That’s how wars start now. Not with a vote in Congress, but with a press release that leaves out the most important word.

Should a Senator’s Coal Empire Get a Free Pass on Poisoning Your Water?

This year the Trump administration killed a federal criminal investigation into the coal empire owned by Senator Jim Justice, Republican of West Virginia and a close Trump ally. Prosecutors at the EPA and Justice Department believed they had a strong case over thousands of Clean Water Act violations. Then the Deputy Attorney General’s office told them, quote, “pencils down.” The DOJ charges only about a dozen criminal water cases a year, so killing one this early is almost unheard of. A former prosecutor of twenty four years said there shouldn’t be an untouchables list. But that’s exactly what we’ve got. Coal mines leach arsenic into the water working families drink, and the message from the top is clear. If you’re Trump’s friend, the law looks the other way.

Republicans Slip Billionaires a Tax Dodge Inside an Air Safety Bill

After a military helicopter killed dozens over the Potomac, Congress finally moved on air safety. Then House Republicans slipped in a gift. The provision says aircraft tracking data can’t be used to identify planes for collecting revenue from owners. Translation, private jet billionaires get help dodging the taxman. A Los Angeles County assessor told Politico that for one year that data brought California thirty five million dollars in revenue. One Senate Democrat put it plainly, quote, “helping private-jet billionaires avoid paying taxes.” This comes a year after Trump and Republicans made private jets fully tax deductible. So a bill written to keep planes from crashing into each other now doubles as a coupon for the superwealthy. That’s who they work for, and it isn’t you.

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Is the Ocean Dying While We Argue About Everything Else?

The United Nations just dropped its third World Ocean Assessment, the work of nearly six hundred scientists from eighty six countries. The findings are grim. The rate of sea level rise has doubled in a decade, from about two millimeters a year to four point three. Every year fifty two million tons of plastic pour into the sea. More than four thousand marine species are now hit by microplastics. Fish stocks that feed billions are collapsing under pollution and industrial fishing. Greenpeace called it an urgent wake up call. The ocean absorbs ninety percent of our excess heat and a third of our carbon. It’s been quietly saving us for generations now. Now it’s buckling, and the people in power would rather sell you a coin.

Speaking of Coins, Has the Grift Ever Been This Shameless?

On his birthday Sunday, Trump will watch a UFC brawl staged outside the White House. To mark it, the Trump Organization and the UFC are hawking Freedom two fifty coins stamped with his face, priced from two hundred fifty dollars up to twelve thousand. They drop today, supposedly to honor America’s two hundred fiftieth birthday. Every patriotic moment, branded and sold. And here’s your palate cleanser. Trump showed up to Game Three of the NBA Finals, got loudly booed during the anthem, appeared to nod off, and watched the Knicks lose for the first time in forty six games. Fans are calling it the Trump Curse. One fan said, quote, “everything he touches turns to shit.” Even basketball isn’t safe.

And that’s the way it is, Today Tuesday, June ninth, two thousand twenty six. I’m Thom Hartmann.

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What Are They Hiding About Trump’s Phony Iran Peace?

Thirty-eight Senate Democrats want answers, and they want them now. In a letter sent Sunday, they’re demanding the Trump administration release the Justice Department legal opinion behind Trump’s claim that the Iran war has, in his word, “terminated.” Trump told Congress on May first that the war ended at the sixty-day mark under the War Powers Resolution. But Democrats led by Adam Schiff, Tim Kaine, and Chuck Schumer aren’t buying it. They point to an ongoing naval blockade, repeated trading of fire in the region, and Trump’s threats to obliterate a whole civilization. They say the administration keeps shifting its justifications for the war. As Kaine put it, “Is there something in the rationale they don’t want us to see?” When pressed last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted no senator had even been allowed to review the opinion. Six American servicemembers have already died in a war Congress never authorized. When a president can declare a war over with a secret memo nobody’s allowed to read, the Constitution isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

Trump’s ICE Army Is Coming For New York

Border czar Tom Homan went on Fox and made a threat. “You’re going to see more ICE than you’ve ever seen, and it’s coming,” he said. Homan claims he’s just reviewed an operational plan to flood the city with agents. This comes right after Governor Kathy Hochul signed a law late last month curbing ICE operations and banning masked agents in her state. Homan says he warned her first. He’d rather grab people already sitting in jails than chase them through neighborhoods, and he’s furious New York won’t hand them over. Tensions are already boiling over at an immigrant detention center in New Jersey. So here’s the real question for working families. When federal agents in masks descend on a city that voted against this president, is that law enforcement, or is that political punishment from a man who can’t take no for an answer?

Why Is The EPA Rigging Science To Poison You?

This one should really make your blood boil. Career scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency told CNN that political appointees are pressuring them to bury the dangers of chemicals already sitting on store shelves. We’re talking cleaners, cosmetics, deodorants, some of them banned outright in Europe. One scientist described being told to invent absurd test scenarios. If dunking two hands in a chemical shows harm, a supervisor asks, what if you dip one finger? A training session reportedly told staff that risk assessment is, quote, “a narrative.” One worker called it explicit instruction to make your chemical pass. Scientists were even told to stop studying the harm a chemical does to specific racial groups. The agency calls this gold standard science. The people who actually do the work call it working backward to a rigged result. Thousands more chemicals are waiting in the pipeline for the very same treatment. And you and your kids are the test subjects.

Working People Are Done Begging For Crumbs On Healthcare

A major coalition led by Public Citizen and groups like National Nurses United says now is the time to organize for Medicare for All. With Americans crushed by high prices and insurance company greed, and with Republicans hacking away at Medicaid, these advocates argue the answer isn’t tinkering around the edges. It’s guaranteeing healthcare to every single person as a basic right. More than one hundred thirty cities and counties have already passed resolutions backing it. The coalition’s message is blunt. “The American people are hungry for bold ideas,” they said, and they’re looking for leaders who’ll fight for working people. For decades the insurance and drug industries have spent hundreds of millions of dollars every year to kill this idea in the cradle. The question heading into the next election is simple. Will our leaders finally find the nerve to take these powerful interests on?

Trump Starves Cuba While Families Sit In The Dark

Four months into a brutal US oil blockade, Cubans are describing real suffering. “We’ve been four days without light,” one resident said. Back in late January, Trump signed an order threatening tariffs on any country that ships oil to the island. Venezuela’s supply was already choked off. The result was a fuel collapse of roughly ninety percent. Hospitals are canceling surgeries for tens of thousands of people. Airlines are scrapping flights for lack of jet fuel. Schools and offices are going dark. And tourism, one of Cuba’s few remaining lifelines, is cratering as international hotel chains pack up and leave the country. The United Nations says it’s deeply worried the humanitarian situation could collapse entirely. This is economic warfare aimed squarely at eleven million ordinary people, punishing families for the sins their government supposedly committed. The cruelty isn’t a side effect here. It’s the entire strategy.

Could A Cold Blob In The Atlantic Freeze Europe?

Scientists are watching a strange patch of cold water in the North Atlantic, and new research says it’s a warning siren. That cold blob is a sign the great ocean current called the AMOC is weakening. This is the conveyor belt that carries warm water north and keeps Europe mild. If it stalls, the modeled consequences are staggering. Europe could see harsh cooling and dried-out farmland, the monsoons that feed Africa and Asia could falter, and seas could rise along America’s East Coast. Iceland was so alarmed it declared an AMOC shutdown a national security threat. The newest study confirms the ocean itself is losing heat, not just the air above it. And here’s the gut punch. The same fossil fuel barons getting rich today are betting your grandchildren’s entire climate on a fragile system that nobody on Earth knows how to restart once it breaks.

And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, June 8th, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.

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Is The President’s Brain Broken?

President Trump stormed off an NBC News set on Sunday after Kristen Welker pressed him on his false claims that the twenty twenty election was rigged. Trump raised his voice, attacked the press, declared the interview over, and walked out. He’s done it before, bailing on CBS in twenty twenty and NPR in twenty twenty-two when reporters pushed back. But this time the reaction came fast and hard. Critics called him emotionally unstable and said he’d gone on a paranoid, babbling rant. Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari put it “This man lost his mind a long time ago,” she said. When a president can’t sit through one honest question, that’s not strength. That’s a man who can’t handle the truth about his own defeat.

Whose Side Was Hegseth On At Normandy?

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used the eighty-second anniversary of D-Day to compare migrants crossing the Mediterranean to the Nazi invasion of Europe. Standing on the beaches where Americans died fighting fascism, he asked when Europe would stop the boats and the men arriving. The backlash was instant and bipartisan. A retired British air marshal called it ignorant and disrespectful. A national security writer noted Hegseth had somehow cast the West as the defenders of the beaches, the very spot where the Nazis stood. Commentator Anna Neumann didn’t hold back. “Using D-Day commemorations as a platform for culture-war politics is shameless,” she said. Those soldiers gave their lives to defeat the ideology Hegseth now seems to echo. Honoring them means understanding what they actually fought against.

Are ICE’s “Worst Of The Worst” Really Criminals?

Homeland Security keeps telling Americans it’s hauling killers and rapists off the streets, calling detainees “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.” But data obtained by the New York Times tells a different story. Most people locked up at the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, New Jersey haven’t been convicted of any crime. Nationwide, forty-three percent of ICE detainees have no criminal history at all. At Delaney Hall, advocates and state data say roughly ninety percent have no record. The thousand-bed prison, run by the GEO Group under a one billion dollar federal contract, has seen hunger strikes and protests over the conditions inside. When the government smears working people as monsters to justify caging them, every one of us should be asking who’s really being protected.

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This is How the Press Dies

Scott Pelley spent thirty-seven years at CBS News. Now, in his first interview since being fired, he says new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss tried to bend a story to match the president. Pelley says a late email about the Sixty Minutes segment on ICE killings in Minnesota, sent after the piece was already approved, asked his team to make the protesters look more violent. She also told him to describe Renee Good, the woman an agent shot dead through her windshield, as driving toward the officer. But the video showed her wheels turned hard the other way, away from him. “But right now, CBS News is on fire,” he said. Pelley refused the changes and was pushed out. When a newsroom rewrites a killing to fit a president’s lie, the free press democracy depends on starts to die.

Why Do Most MAGA Republicans Think Violence Is Justified?

A new analysis published in Injury Epidemiology has a number that should stop you cold. Nearly fifty-six percent of MAGA Republicans said political violence is usually or always justified to advance at least one of twenty-one political goals. Among non-MAGA, non-Republicans, that figure was about twenty-five percent. The good news is they’re no more willing to actually commit violence themselves than anyone else. Researcher Garen Wintemute urged caution about reading too much into any single group. “Looking at only one group can be misleading,” he said. Still, when a movement this large shares a belief that violence can be justified, it builds a climate where violence becomes thinkable. And in a democracy, the ballot is supposed to be the only weapon we ever need, and the surest protection against those who’d rather use force.

And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, June 8, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.

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Is Blackstone The Next Lehman Brothers?

Here’s something that should worry every working person. Blackstone just slammed the door on investors trying to pull their money out of its giant private credit fund. The fund holds 79 billion dollars. This week investors asked to cash out 10 percent of their shares. Blackstone said no, you only get 5. Last quarter they let everybody out. Now they’re capping the exits for the first time ever. And they’re not alone. The whole two trillion dollar private credit market is under a cloud. Switzerland’s Partners Group did the same thing days earlier, and warned the panic is spreading from private credit into private equity. We’ve seen this movie before. In 2008, Lehman Brothers froze up and the whole economy crashed down on regular folks. When the rich start running for the doors, that’s when you watch your wallet.

Who’s Secretly Bankrolling The Attack On Black Voting Rights?

Now follow the money. When the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in the Louisiana case, the groups that pushed for it were swimming in secret cash. A watchdog called True North Research found seven conservative nonprofits that filed briefs took in nearly 105 million dollars in dark money between 2021 and 2024. That’s seven times what they got before. Stephen Miller’s America First Legal Foundation grabbed more than 58 million all by itself. The money moved through donor-advised funds, which let billionaires hide their names while they rewrite the rules. One researcher put it plainly. “It’s making it harder for people to vote.” That’s not democracy. That’s a hostile takeover of our democracy.

Why Is Trump Handing Coal Plants Your Tax Dollars?

Here’s one that’ll make your blood boil. President Trump is using his wartime powers, the Defense Production Act, to prop up more than a dozen dying coal plants. The price tag is 700 million dollars of your money. The Sierra Club called it “disgusting and reprehensible.” And here’s the kicker. At the same time, the administration is paying companies billions to NOT build offshore wind farms. Pay billions to kill clean energy, then pay hundreds of millions to keep dirty coal on life support. One climate scientist said, “So much for the free market.” This is socialism for big coal, paid by you, and it’ll make your kids sicker and your power bills higher.

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Are You Ready For AI Worms That Learn And Take Over Everything?

Now buckle up for the scary one. Researchers at the University of Toronto just built a computer worm powered by artificial intelligence. Old viruses follow one set of instructions. Patch the hole and you stop them. This thing is different. It learns. It thinks. It hunts for new weaknesses on its own and rewrites its attack as it spreads from machine to machine. They built it with free AI models anybody can download, at almost no cost. One expert called it a fundamentally new threat. The good news, they did it in a sealed-off lab. The bad news, if a few researchers can do it cheap, so can the bad guys. They ran it on a fake company network and watched it spread on its own. The age of self-learning malware just arrived, and most of us aren’t ready.

Will Trump’s Ocean Cuts Leave The World Flying Blind?

And finally, the Trump administration is ripping out one of the most important science tools we’ve got. The National Science Foundation is dismantling most of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a 368 million dollar network of deep-sea sensors that’s been running for over a decade. Those sensors track ocean heat, currents, carbon, and coastal flooding. They feed your weather forecasts and hurricane warnings. Scientists say tearing it out will severely degrade those predictions and leave us, in their words, flying blind. And we’re paying for this taxpayer equipment whether it’s switched on or not. One oceanographer called it penny wise and tons foolish. They’re throwing away gear we already paid for and bought and installed. With hurricane season already here, that blind spot could cost lives.

And that’s the way it is, Today Friday, June 5th, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.

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Whose War Is Driving Up Your Grocery Bill?

The OECD just cut its forecast for the entire world economy, and it’s pointing straight at the war with Iran. Global growth slows from 3.4 percent last year to 2.8 percent this year. And that’s the good scenario. The OECD laid out two paths, and the bad one is ugly. If the fighting drags on and the Strait of Hormuz stays choked off, growth crashes to 2.1 percent this year and 1.8 percent next year. That’s recession territory. Energy prices have soared, and that’s driving up the cost of fertilizer, food, and just about everything you buy. The OECD’s chief economist said it plainly. “The conflict in the Middle East has become the dominant force.” The report warns unemployment could climb and investment could weaken, even in the AI boom everyone keeps bragging about. And the Federal Reserve is stuck in wait and see mode while families do the worrying. When one chokepoint on the map can wreck household budgets from Portland to Paris, that’s not strength. That’s proof that working people always pay the price for somebody else’s war.

Trump Just Made It Easier to Fire 8,000 Federal Workers

Yesterday Trump signed an executive order stripping job protections from about 8,000 senior federal workers. They get dumped into a new category called Schedule Policy Career, and it turns them into at-will employees. That means they can be fired for any reason, or no reason at all. These aren’t political appointees. They’re career civil servants. The people who write the regulations, run the programs, and decide who gets federal grants. The Office of Personnel Management once floated reclassifying as many as 50,000. The head of the largest federal workers’ union called it “a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government.” Several lawsuits are already fighting it. Here’s why it matters. A civil service that answers to the law becomes a civil service that answers to one man. That’s how you turn a government of the people into a government of loyalty tests.

Should Anybody Be Allowed to Own a Trillion Dollars?

Elon Musk is about to make history, and not the good kind. When SpaceX goes public on the Nasdaq, as soon as June 12th, Musk is expected to become the world’s first trillionaire. The offering targets a valuation around 1.75 trillion dollars, and Musk owns roughly 42 percent of the company. Democrats see a gift. They’ve got a new word for the campaign trail. Not millionaires. Not billionaires. Trillionaire. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal put it bluntly online. “Nobody should be a trillionaire. Tax the damn rich.” Bernie Sanders called it insanity for one man to pile up that much. The point isn’t envy. The point is power. When a single person controls more wealth than entire nations, he doesn’t just buy yachts. He buys elections, agencies, and the rules the rest of us have to live under. That’s the fight heading into the midterms.

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Is Trump Still Trying to Annex Greenland and Canada?

At a House hearing yesterday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Greenland is part of Denmark, quote, “for now.” For now. Let that sink in. He was answering questions about Trump’s push to seize the island, and Rubio said Trump believes it’s easier to defend Greenland with complete control of it. Meanwhile Trump is back to calling Canada the 51st state. Both Greenland and Canada have said the same thing over and over. They are not for sale. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney just shrugged the whole thing off. These are allies. Friends. Countries that have stood with America for generations. European leaders have warned that grabbing Greenland by force would put NATO itself on the line. Now our oldest partners are being treated like real estate. When the most powerful nation on earth starts eyeing its neighbors’ land, that’s not diplomacy. That’s the language of empire, and history shows us exactly where that road ends.

Trump Is Starving the Agency That Defends Workers

The National Labor Relations Board is the agency that’s supposed to have your back when a boss breaks the law. Right now it’s being hollowed out. When Trump came back into office, the board’s budget sat at 302 million dollars. It had already fallen from 408 million back in 2011 once you adjust for inflation. Now it’s down to 294 million, and Trump’s asking Congress for just 285 million next year. Less money means fewer staff. And fewer staff means a mountain of unresolved cases piling up while workers wait for justice. Two Democratic congressmen just demanded answers about that backlog. And the Supreme Court is sitting on a case that could let Trump fire independent board members at will. Starve the budget, stack the board, stall the courts. That’s not reform. That’s how you quietly kill the one place a worker can go when the powerful cheat.

Why Are Flesh-Eating Maggots Crossing Into Texas? Think Trump!

And finally, a story that sounds like a horror movie, except it’s real. The USDA confirmed yesterday that the New World screwworm has turned up in a three-week-old calf in Zavala County, Texas. It’s the first time this flesh-eating parasite has hit US livestock in decades. The screwworm is a fly that lays its eggs in open wounds, and the maggots burrow in and eat the animal alive. America wiped it out back in the 1960s with a clever program of sterile fly releases. So how did it come back? Critics point to Trump and DOGE cuts that gutted the very programs built to keep this pest out. A Texas attorney didn’t mince words. “Worst part is, this was preventable.” Governor Abbott has declared a disaster, and the USDA has thrown up a quarantine zone around the calf. They call this thing the flying piranha. Ranchers are bracing for billions in losses and higher meat prices at the store. Cut the science, and the bugs win. Simple as that.

And that’s the way it is, Today is Thursday, June 4th, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.

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Is the Country Trump’s to Liquidate?

A new report from the American Economic Liberties Project and Groundwork Collaborative lays it out in painful detail. They call it “The Price of Corruption,” and it shows how Trump’s pay-to-play government is jacking up costs for working families while padding his own pockets. The report says TrumpRx, sold as a way to get cheaper drugs, is really a scheme funneling more money to big pharma. Tariff rates that shift after gold bars change hands. Enforcement actions dropped after seven-figure donations. A pardon for a health care fraudster right after his mother wrote a check at Mar-a-Lago. Morgan Harper of Economic Liberties put it plainly. “The country is not Trump’s to liquidate.” Groundwork found three-quarters of voters want accountability. When government becomes a grift, you and your family pay the bill.

Why Is America’s Biggest Hate Group Doubling Every Year?

Internal documents leaked to USA Today expose Patriot Front, one of the nation’s largest white supremacist groups, growing fast. You’ve seen them, rows of identical men in blue shirts and white masks. More than 540 members now, in every state but Hawaii. The group’s roughly doubled in size every year since 2018, and pulled in over half its ranks in just the past two years. A source inside handed over a 72-page roster and step-by-step recruitment manuals. They run fight clubs where young men train in mixed martial arts and sign up new recruits. The 27-year-old leader, Thomas Rousseau, wants 600 members by July 4th. These aren’t foreign agents. They’re American men who saw an organized hate movement and decided they wanted in. That should keep all of us up at night.

Four Republicans Break Ranks to Stop Trump’s War

The House voted Wednesday to rein in Trump’s war powers in Iran. The tally was 215 to 208, and for the first time, just enough Republicans crossed the aisle. Thomas Massie, Brian Fitzpatrick, Tom Barrett, and Warren Davidson joined every single Democrat. This Iran war’s dragged on more than three months, blew past the 60-day legal deadline, and Congress never authorized it. Speaker Mike Johnson fought the vote, even sent members home early to kill it. It didn’t work. The resolution’s mostly symbolic, and it faces a tough road in the Senate and a likely Trump veto. Republican Brian Mast brushed it off as a “stupid political vote.” But it’s the clearest rebuke yet. Congress is supposed to declare wars, not rubber-stamp a president who starts them alone.

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Who Speaks for the Palestinians on Trump’s Board of Peace?

At the first meeting of Trump’s so-called Board of Peace, he pledged ten billion dollars from the United States and announced seven billion more from other countries for Gaza. Forty nations showed up. Orban and Milei got red MAGA hats. FIFA threw in 75 million for soccer fields. Trump even renamed the Institute of Peace after himself. But here’s what’s missing. There’s no Palestinian voice on the Gaza board. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem called it a “colonialist operation,” others deciding for the Palestinians. Britain, France, Norway, and even Pope Leo all turned down the invitation to join. A peace plan built without the people it claims to save isn’t peace. It’s somebody else carving up their land and calling it a generous gift to the world.

Did Trump Really Compare a Pool to a Skyscraper?

And finally, in the Oval Office Wednesday, Trump held up a giant chart titled “Our Pool is Bigger than Skyscrapers.” He was comparing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation to the Willis Tower, the Empire State Building, and One World Trade Center. Lay it on its side, he said, and it’d take two or three skyscrapers to fill it. The width, he bragged, is almost 200 feet. Now, pools are flat. Skyscrapers are vertical. Journalist Aaron Rupar gently pointed that out. The MeidasTouch Network was blunter, summing it up in a single word. “Unwell.” This is the man holding the nuclear codes, spending his afternoon proving a puddle beats a tower. Laugh if you want. Then remember he runs the country.

And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday, June 4th, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.

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Is Trump’s Iran Blockade About to Blow Up Your Gas Tank Even More?

Donald Trump’s war on Iran is now hitting you harder - where you fill up. On Wednesday the United States and Iran traded military strikes again, and American oil inventories fell to their lowest level in more than two decades. The president says his blockade of Iran could drag on all the way to Labor Day. The Strait of Hormuz carries one out of every five barrels of the world’s oil, and it’s been choked off for three months now. The American military has already turned back six ships and rerouted more than a hundred others trying to get through. The International Energy Agency says it’s the largest oil supply disruption the global market has ever seen. So why won’t this end? Because Trump keeps holding out for a grand finale, some trophy deal he can brag is better than Obama’s. He even told a reporter he “couldn’t care less” if the talks collapse. Think about that. A war that’s draining our oil reserves and squeezing every commuter and trucker in the country, and the man who started it is bored. So working families pay more at the pump while one man chases a headline.

Sanders Builds a Movement and the Establishment Should Be Nervous

Here’s some good news for working people. On Tuesday, candidates backed by Bernie Sanders swept Democratic primaries from New Jersey to Montana to California. One organizer called it “shaping up to be a clean sweep.” Sanders has now endorsed sixty one state and local progressives this cycle, part of what he calls “building a movement for the future.” And he’s blunt about the target. This movement isn’t just taking on the Republican Party. It’s taking on the corporate wing of the Democratic Party too, the donors and consultants who’ve spent decades telling us to settle for less. When candidates who refuse big money keep winning, it tells you regular folks are done waiting for permission. Sanders has been packing arenas on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, and now those crowds are turning into votes. That’s how you build power from the bottom up, one race at a time, and it scares the people who’ve owned both parties for far too long.

What Happens When a Tiny School District Refuses to Bend the Knee?

In Winooski, Vermont, the most diverse town in the state, more than a third of the schoolkids are still learning English. Their superintendent, Wilmer Chavarria, decided he wasn’t going to hand them over to anybody. His district was the first in Vermont to pass a sanctuary policy keeping ICE off campus without a judge’s warrant. He refused to sign Trump’s loyalty pledge on banning diversity programs. For that, his community got flooded with death threats, especially after they raised the Somali flag and Trump called Somali immigrants “garbage.” Chavarria knows the cost personally. He’s been a citizen since 2018, and federal agents still detained him at a Houston airport. One of his own second graders was grabbed by ICE over Thanksgiving. He’s risked federal money and his own safety to keep these kids feeling safe. And still he won’t back down. That’s what real courage looks like in a frightened country, and it ought to shame every politician who stayed quiet.

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Why Did Trump Hand a 205 Billion Dollar Agency to the Epstein Family?

Donald Trump put a man named Ben Black in charge of a federal agency that controls two hundred and five billion dollars. Ben’s father is Leon Black, the Apollo billionaire who paid Jeffrey Epstein at least one hundred fifty eight million dollars and who Epstein privately called “Mr. Big.” Now the Guardian reports that newly surfaced emails show Ben Black himself had personal ties to Epstein, not just his father. The Senate confirmed him by a single razor thin vote last October, right before another pile of Epstein records came spilling out. So ask yourself why this White House keeps fighting tooth and nail to bury the Epstein files while quietly rewarding the people closest to that whole rotten circle. When the powerful protect each other, the rest of us are supposed to just look away. We won’t.

America Believes E. Jean Carroll Over Trump, Two to One

A jury already found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll and then defaming her, and the courts have upheld eighty eight million dollars in judgments against him. Now a new poll shows the country agrees with that jury. Forty six percent of Americans believe Carroll. Only twenty seven percent believe Trump. Among independents it’s fifty four to fourteen. Even six percent of his own MAGA supporters side with her. And how does Trump answer losing the argument? His Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into Carroll herself, and he’s still fighting the verdict in court. That isn’t justice. That’s a president turning the full weight of the federal government against the woman who told the truth about him, and daring the rest of us to do something about it. The country just answered. They believe her.

Will Washington Stand By and Let Your Social Security Check Get Slashed?

Here’s a number every working person should burn into memory. Five hundred dollars a month. That’s how much the average Social Security check could get cut starting in 2032, according to a new report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. When the retirement trust fund runs dry, benefits drop by twenty four percent automatically unless Congress acts. The report warns that “no state would be spared.” More than seventy million Americans count on these checks, money they earned over a lifetime of payroll taxes. This isn’t some accident of nature. It’s a choice. We could lift the payroll cap so billionaires finally pay the same rate you do, and the shortfall mostly disappears. But the same crowd that hands tax cuts to the rich suddenly swears we can’t afford to keep our promise to seniors. They’ve known this day was coming for forty years. The question is whether Washington protects your retirement or protects the wealthy. We already know which one they’d pick if we let them.

And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, June 3, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.

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Are Americans Finally Ready to Punish Corruption at the Top?

A new Brennan Center poll should terrify both parties. More than nine in ten voters say corruption is a big problem all across our government. And it’s not partisan. Democrats, Republicans, and independents all agree. Eighty-three percent want a law barring presidents from cashing in on conflicts of interest. Eighty-one percent want a real ethics cop with teeth. Seventy-nine percent want the limits put back on money in elections. Michael Waldman calls corruption the sleeper issue of 2026. People are sick of scandals with no consequences. They want a country that finally holds the powerful accountable.

Pentagon Hands a Convicted Capitol Rioter the Keys to Its Secrets

Here’s a jaw dropper. The Trump Pentagon just hired a convicted January 6th rioter for one of its most sensitive counterterrorism jobs. His name is Elias Irizarry. He was nineteen when he climbed into the Capitol through a broken window carrying a metal pole. Now he sits in the office overseeing special operations, work that demands top secret clearance. Staff are alarmed. At his sentencing he admitted, “I am ashamed because I will always be a part of this disgrace.” Yet the Pentagon calls him a qualified, patriotic young professional. When loyalty to Trump outranks loyalty to the country, this is what you get.

Supreme Court Greenlights a Map It Already Called Racist

The Supreme Court is at it again. Tuesday night, six conservative justices let Alabama use a congressional map a lower court already ruled intentionally racist against Black voters. It wipes out one of two majority Black districts and likely hands Republicans another House seat. Justice Sotomayor was furious. She wrote that just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, “the Court today doubles down on chaos.” A three judge panel, two of them Trump appointees, unanimously struck this map down. The highest court overruled them to help one party keep power. That’s not law. That’s raw politics in a robe.

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Did Bari Weiss Just Murder Sixty Minutes?

Over at CBS, the slaughter continues. Veteran correspondent Scott Pelley got fired Tuesday, a day after telling staff that editor Bari Weiss is murdering the show. Pelley didn’t go quietly. In a blistering statement, he said management told him to “inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story” and report things that weren’t verified. He says the show lost its DNA when its leadership and two top correspondents were fired last month. One executive put it bluntly, this is exactly what Donald Trump wanted. When the most trusted name in news gets gutted to please a president, we should all be worried.

Why Are Your Gas Prices About to Explode Again?

Get ready to feel it at the pump. Oil analyst Patrick De Haan is sounding the alarm. American distillate supplies are about to fall below a hundred million barrels, the lowest in over twenty years. He calls it “a powder keg waiting to go off.” Why? Because the Strait of Hormuz, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil, has been choked off for months by Trump’s war with Iran. Even if the fighting stops tomorrow, executives warn prices will keep climbing. Brown University figures the war has already cost the average household four hundred dollars. The people who started this war won’t pay for it. You will.

Big Food Stole Big Tobacco’s Playbook to Hook Your Family

Finally, follow the money onto your dinner plate. A new American Journal of Public Health edition lays it out cold. Big Food is running the same playbook Big Tobacco used for decades. They engineer salt, sugar, and fat to hit a bliss point, so you keep eating long after you’re full. They slap healthy labels on junk, just like tobacco sold us filters. In some cases the very same corporations own both. Most of the American diet is now this stuff. One study links the heaviest eaters to a sixty percent higher dementia risk. Researchers say fight back like we fought cigarettes, with taxes, warning labels, and a ban on marketing to kids.

And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.

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